Warwick Slavik isn’t the center of the Universe

Jesse S. Mitchell

The rain started suddenly and it began to end as abruptly, coming down in odd streaks and rivulets.   Precipitation as ribaldry, Deluge as mockery, the concrete could not absorb it, it just rushed and washed this way and that, aimless, in limbo.  The taxi lurched through the clogged streets, and Warwick saw them, two people huddled together in a doorway, asylum seekers, and their faces pressed together, oblivious now that the rain had stopped.  The scene looked black and white, sepiatoned, shades of grey, like a Vivian Meier.  A binary star system, twin suns locked in gravitational orbit of pure elation.  The epicenter of their own galaxy. Warwick felt the way he imagined it felt to be Jean Cocteau, or Mark Rothko, all alone in purgatory rain, adrift in empty space, watching, watching from the edge.

 Because nobody could be the center of an anything, anywhere, without an anybody else.